thanks very much for the guides. how would you recommend the best way to reforge and gem a blood dk for these? i noticed you were going for hit and expertise on your armory but wasn't sure if that was for raids or challenge modes.

thanks very much for the guides. how would you recommend the best way to reforge and gem a blood dk for these? i noticed you were going for hit and expertise on your armory but wasn't sure if that was for raids or challenge modes.

also how about runeforges? is fallen crusader worth considering?

It's for both atm. Fallen Crusader is definitely worth it, but you don't need it (I didn't bother until the last few).

Congrats! Thanks for all the well wishes and thanks everyone, I don't feel the guides are perfect but it's nice to know they help even a little bit

Your guide has helped a few guilds on my server after I shared it with them we have a few groups with a few golds. One group had a world record gold for a week.
Awesome guides thanks a lot saved us hours of finding stuff out.

We completed all of them with Blood DK, Holy Paladin, Ret Paladin, Demonology Warlock and Fury Warrior.

I wouldn't whine and say that there needs to be less melee friendly mechanics, but I will whine in saying that there should be more anti-ranged mechanics. I couldn't think of one scenario where our composition really shined over a group with 2-3 ranged DPS. If you really want to make challenge modes "EZ" mode, grab 3 ranged DPS and have at it.

The cleaves, whirlwinds, placed AoE, AoE attack power debuffs and exploding mobs on death is absolutely astounding.

With all of that even with our composition Shado-Pan wasn't that difficult for us, I would place it more in the middle. It might be because it was our first challenge mode and we weren't in the mindset, but Scarlet Monastery felt absolutely brutal for us.

I was the Blood DK in our run and I used full DPS gear in EVERY single challenge mode. Not once did I swap into tank gear.

Do some practice runs and find out what you're capable of pulling and what pack you want to invisibility pot. There is a lot of skill involved in MOST of these instances but there is a lot of prep that goes into them as well. You really have to go into them with the mindset that the entire instance is a new heroic raid boss and go from there.

We completed all of them with Blood DK, Holy Paladin, Ret Paladin, Demonology Warlock and Fury Warrior.

I wouldn't whine and say that there needs to be less melee friendly mechanics, but I will whine in saying that there should be more anti-ranged mechanics. I couldn't think of one scenario where our composition really shined over a group with 2-3 ranged DPS. If you really want to make challenge modes "EZ" mode, grab 3 ranged DPS and have at it.

The cleaves, whirlwinds, placed AoE, AoE attack power debuffs and exploding mobs on death is absolutely astounding.

With all of that even with our composition Shado-Pan wasn't that difficult for us, I would place it more in the middle. It might be because it was our first challenge mode and we weren't in the mindset, but Scarlet Monastery felt absolutely brutal for us.

I was the Blood DK in our run and I used full DPS gear in EVERY single challenge mode. Not once did I swap into tank gear.

Do some practice runs and find out what you're capable of pulling and what pack you want to invisibility pot. There is a lot of skill involved in MOST of these instances but there is a lot of prep that goes into them as well. You really have to go into them with the mindset that the entire instance is a new heroic raid boss and go from there.

Yeah, it's a bit funny how group composition changes everything when going for Golds. We found Scarlet Monastery very easy. On our first "practice run" we missed Gold by 4 seconds and just went back again to get it comfortably. We had a Prot Warrior, Affli Lock, Fire Mage, Elemental Shaman and Resto Druid.

I have to assume spell reflect and the multitude of stuns and interrupts helps vastly for huge packs of casters (scarlet monastery). Easily the hardest part of that zone is just dealing with the insane damage the large trash pulls do.

But, that's why I tried not to get TOO comp specific - beyond knowing what each pull consists of and whether it's high damage, low damage, etc, the rest of how to deal with it is very much going to depend on what you've got with you (Our group had high damage but relatively tame control, and flat out weak interrupts).

What's the advised hit/exp caps for challenge modes? Is it worth capping for trash (6% hit, 12% expertise, level 92 cap) or should you aim for bosses as well (7.5% hit, 15% expertise, level 93 cap)

I'm tanking (prot paladin) and have targetted the trash cap, reforging for haste to push up dps, but I'm unsure if this is the best strategy for maxing dps while tanking challenge modes. I'm largely ignoring survivability on bosses, as they are nowhere near as lethal as the trash meaning ShotR uptime can be ignored for arguments sake.

I don't raid anymore, so I'm talking about a challenge mode only gear set here.